January 04, 2016

It's a numbers game with real political consequences. Senate President Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, has asked the state auditor general to randomly assign numbers to all 40 Senate districts Tuesday, as directed by Circuit Judge George Reynolds' redistricting decision issued on Dec. 30.

All 40 Senate seats will be up for election next fall for the second time in four years -- an unprecedented consequence of Florida's redistricting saga.

Superstitious senators will be crossing fingers and rubbing rabbits' feet to get the numbers they're seeking -- and then they may be calling their favorite Realtor.

Twenty Senate districts will be assigned odd numbers and 20 will be given even numbers. Senators who are assigned odd numbers would run for four-year terms in the fall, and senators in even-numbered districts would run for two-year terms, followed by four-year terms in 2018 -- if they're not termed out by then. Those "even" senators would potentially serve an additional two years for a total of 10 years, under the Florida system of electing senators to staggered terms.

No one in the Senate appears to have more at stake in the numbers game than Sen. Wilton Simpson, R-Trilby, needs a winnable even-numbered district to fulfill his ambition to be Senate president in the 2020-2022 cycle. Simpson's "lucky number" on the court-approved remapping of districts is 18 (his current district number, and the number tentatively assigned to a new Pasco-Hillsborough Senate seat). If it doesn't happen, Simpson will be termed out of office in 2020.

December 30, 2015

A judge on Wednesday approved a new map of Florida's 40 Senate districts drawn by a coalition of voting rights groups, dealing yet another political and legal setback to the Republican-controlled Legislature.

The Senate had no immediate comment on Circuit Judge George Reynolds' order. His 73-page ruling orders the Senate to randomly assign district numbers to all 40 districts within three days of a final judgment being entered.

Republicans currently control 26 seats and Democrats 14. After reviewing the approved map, known as CPS-4a, Democratic consultant Matthew Isbell posted on Twitter that the map appears to improve Democrats' chances of gaining seats next fall.

The complaint marks the next phase of a legal battle over the state's political boundaries that has raged for nearly four years. The first two drafts of a congressional plan --- approved by the Legislature in 2012 and tweaked in 2014 --- were thrown out by state courts for violating a voter-approved ban on political gerrymandering.

But the reorientation of Brown's congressional district, which has long ambled from Jacksonville to Orlando but now would run from Jacksonville in the east to Gadsden County in the west, prompted the Democratic congresswoman to file suit this year against the change. After the Florida Supreme Court officially approved the new district early this month, Brown was allowed to update her case Tuesday.

The challenge goes to great lengths to portray the areas encompassed by the Jacksonville-to-Orlando version of the district as a distinct region that includes African-American voters with similar interests and problems. It traces a history that includes the Ku Klux Klan, baseball player Jackie Robinson's spring training and the book "Their Eyes Were Watching God."

Dozens of voters from the area joined Brown's lawsuit.

"Black voters have reaped substantial benefits by being in a district in which they can elect a candidate of their choice, including having a representative who understands the needs of the community she represents, brings infrastructure money to the district, helps black residents obtain government contracts, brings job fairs to the district, and is very accessible to her constituents," the complaint says.

Brown's Jacksonville-to-Orlando seat has long been at the center of conflicts in Florida over gerrymandered districts. Critics see it as an attempt to aid Republican campaigns, especially those in Central Florida, by concentrating African-American Democratic voters in a single district. But supporters say it ensures those voters the chance to elect a candidate of their choice.

December 28, 2015

In the aftermath of another redistricting shakeup, Florida's congressional delegation is in flux as a court-approved map threatens to whittle away at the 17-member Republican majority while Democrats gain strength.

December’s ruling by the Florida Supreme Court approved a map drawn by a coalition of voting groups — and it is having a ripple effect from Miami to Tallahassee.

At least five of the 27 members of Congress are edged out of their current districts. Four incumbents – U.S. Reps. Richard Nugent, R-Spring Hill, David Jolly, R-Indian Shores, Ron DeSantis, R-Port Orange, and Patrick Murphy, D-West Palm Beach — are not running for reelection. U.S. Reps. Dan Webster, R-Orlando, and Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, are considering moving to new territory.

U.S. Reps. Gwen Graham, D-Tallahassee, is now forced to run in a district with a majority of Republicans or consider another race.

In Miami, where Democrats outnumber Republicans by 230,000 voters, U.S. Reps. Carlos Curbelo and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen now have districts filled with many more Democrats.

And, across the state, incumbents find themselves representing communities that have never voted for them — prompting challengers, who otherwise may have waited on the sidelines for incumbents to retire, to consider running now.

"We’re closer to fairness,’’ said Michael McDonald, associate professor of political science at the University of Florida and an expert on redistricting.

“You’re probably looking at Democrats getting 12 and Republicans 15 in 2016, rather than 10 and 17,” he predicted. The incremental shift will continue when Ros-Lehtinen, a popular Republican incumbent, retires. “That seat is likely to swing to the Democrat and then you’re looking at a 14-13 split in the delegation. That’s pretty fair.”

December 18, 2015

After eight rulings by the Florida Supreme Court and an admission of guilt by legislators, the Senate redistricting trial ended Thursday with a Tallahassee judge asking the parties to tell him their top choices for a new Senate map.

Leon County Circuit Court Judge George Reynolds now must decide whether to accept one of four proposals offered by the challengers — a coalition of the League of Women Voters, Common Cause of Florida and a group of Democrat-leaning individuals — or a map drawn by Senate staff but never voted on by the Legislature.

The challengers said Reynolds should pick one of two maps that create four Hispanic-majority districts in Miami-Dade County, boosting the number of Hispanic-dominated seats from three and opening the door to a Hispanic district dominated by Democrats.

The Senate’s lawyers, who operated solo during the four-day trial as the House sat on the sidelines, told the judge that if he rejects the Senate’s proposed map — the Senate’s first choice — they would like him to draw his own. The Senate offered up its map drawer to work with the plaintiffs’ map drawer to do the job. More here.

December 16, 2015

The head of the Senate redistricting committee testified Wednesday that he had no idea the map he submitted to the court gave Republicans a potential three-vote majority in the Senate and paired the fewest incumbents of any other proposal.

"I don’t know how clear I can make it. We did not …analyze where members live,’’ said Sen. Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, under oath in the redistricting trial over the Senate map.

The rare testimony of a sitting senator occurred as the Senate attempts to defend the map it submitted to the court after agreeing in July that the map it produced in 2012 violated the anti-gerrymandering provisions of the Florida Constitution.

The Senate is trying to show that maps proposed by the challengers violate the constitution because they were drawn with the intention of helping Democrats, while the challengers -- a coalition of voter groups led by the League of Women Voters -- are trying to show the Senate maps intentionally favor Republicans.

Leon County Circuit Court Judge George Reynolds will decide who is right and must recommend a map to the Florida Supreme Court for approval that will be used to determine the Senate’s 40 districts for the 2016 elections. He has suggested that he is prepared to pick and choose pieces of the map and “stitch” pieces together on his own.

Because legislators failed to agree to a map during a three-week special session, Galvano submitted a map he had instructed the staff director of the Senate redistricting committee to prepare. Galvano testified that his draft map merged two "base" maps that had been drawn by staff without input from senators. He said he intended to use it as a possible amendment during session, he said, but discarded it after the Senate agreed on a different proposal.

December 15, 2015

The second day of the Florida redistricting trial ended early Tuesday as the Florida Senate presented a single witness in defense of its redistricting map who withstood a blistering cross examination before the Senate rested its case.

The Senate sole witness was Baodong (Paul) Liu, a professor of political science at the University of Utah, who testified that the Senate's maps were superior because they were more likely to guarantee that minorities could be elected to office.

But in a two-hour cross examination, the lead lawyer for the challengers, David King, attempted to poke holes in Liu's testimony, showing that he failed to include in his report the "functional analysis" that the Florida Supreme Court has ruled is necessary to determine the voting performance of minority districts.

King prompted Liu to concede that he relied on voting patterns in Central Florida to determine the performance patterns of voters in Broward County, and he provoked Liu to acknowledge that he got the results of one election wrong in his report to the court -- claiming that a black candidate for Orange County clerk of court had been defeated when she had won.

Liu said he relied on "local people" to provide him with "accurate information" about the results and did not verify it independently.

After Liu's testimony, Senate lawyers withdrew a second witness, prompting lawyers to suggest that the weeklong trial could end earlier than the scheduled Friday adjournment.

The focus of Liu's testimony was his review of the state's voting trends, concluding that because of Florida's history of racially polarized voting, the Senate maps proposed by the challengers would likely lead to whites being elected in districts intended for blacks and Hispanics, in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act and the Fair Districts amendments to the state constitution.

He concluded that to increase minority voting participation in Florida, districts must be drawn to give the minority the majority of the population. That means that for blacks to be elected in a Senate district, the voting age population must exceed 50 percent, and for Hispanics to be elected, the voting age population must exceed 75 percent.

"My conclusion is the state Senate plan is a better plan than the alternative plan,'' based on scientific methods used to study "racially polarized voting in the state," Liu told the court.

But King challenged him to point to an election that proved these conclusions were accurate. Liu could not cite an example but said that was no reason to conclude it wouldn't happen.

December 14, 2015

A one-minute phone call between Sen. David Simmons and the staff redistricting director was replayed in the opening day of the Senate trial Monday as plaintiffs tried to show that many senators know where each other lives and worked to protect each other when drawing maps.

The phone conversation, which occurred at 9 a.m. on Oct. 26, came in the midst of the Senate redistricting session as Simmons was attempting to draft his own alternative to a Senate map that was widely unpopular with several senators.

"With respect to the maps, going to go ahead and revise the maps to get what I would consider to be more aesthetic situation. I want Highlands County out of District 18,'' Simmons told Jay Ferrin, the Senate's redistricting director, according to the recording replayed before Circuit Court Judge George Reynolds.

"There's another reason that I have,'' he admitted, "and that is that I do not want two of our female senators running against each other because I don't think it's appropriate and I think that's the result of that. I don't consider that acceptable. So I want you to work it so that it looks better and those two are not forced into running against each other for no purpose whatsoever."

Ferrin, sounding bit flustered, responded: "I don't have any knowledge of where people are living. If you want me to separate Highlands County from District 18, just tell me that."

The Senate redistricting trial began Monday with an admission of guilt by the Senate about past wrongs, and a rare agreement between the sides.

Lawyers for the House and Senate and the challengers, a coalition led by the League of Women Voters and Common Cause of Florida, agreed that two maps submitted in the 2012 redistricting fight as public maps were actually drawn by Republican political operatives.

Both sides agreed that Gainesville political consultant Alex Patton submitted a map on Nov. 1, 2011, as part of the public submission process, but “Mr. Patton didn’t draw that map and in fact it was drawn by the political operatives,’’ said Tom Zehnder, lawyer for the challengers.

They also agreed a map submitted by Republican political activist Remzey Samarrai of Micanopy was drawn by the group of Republicans working with Pat Bainter and others. (Our story on that here.)

The admission by lawyers for the Florida Legislature helped to catapult the weeklong trial from a focus on past wrongs to a focus on current issues as they attempt to cover legal arguments, political intrigue and the gritty detail about geographic boundaries throughout the state.

The Legislature agreed in July that because of evidence that showed the GOP operatives had infiltrated the 2012 map drawing process, the map violated the anti-gerrymandering provisions of the Florida Constitution.

The Legislature then tried and failed to draw a new map in special session but, after failing to get enoguh votes for a final proposal that would have created political winners and losers, the burden now rests with the court. Leon County Circuit Court Judge George Reynolds must decide between a map that was chosen by Senate Reapportionment Committee Chairman Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, alone but never voted on by the Legislature, or four maps drawn by the challengers.

The weeklong redistricting trial scheduled to begin in a Tallahassee courtroom Monday will determine the fate of Florida’s 40 Senate districts and the future of the 29 incumbents seeking reelection.

The rare political scramble is forcing all of them back onto the ballot in November, including many of whom thought they could sit out this election because they were elected to a four-year term in 2014. And they each want to know: Who will have to move to get reelected, who faces new competition and who faces new communities to represent?

The remaining 11 senators are not seeking reelection because they are either leaving because of term limits, or seeking another office.

It is the vestige of the Fair Districts amendments to the state constitution that were approved by voters six years ago, and the districts remain in limbo because legislators admitted to manipulating the political boundaries three years ago to benefit Republicans — in violation of the amendments — then tried and failed to redraw the Senate map during a three-week special session.

Now, the job of preparing a new map is left to Circuit Court Judge George Reynolds, and he has only a week to do it. Both sides have submitted maps and each will accuse the other of drawing a map with improper partisan intent.